Still Talking (27 page)

Now, Rupert Murdoch joined the romancing. On March 24, before we all went to the Academy Awards ceremony, we went to Barry’s house for drinks to meet Rupert Murdoch and his wife just folks getting to know each other. We talked about the show and the excitement of forming a network and how pleased they were to have me aboard. He wanted to start in October and do the show live-which we agreed to try in a six-month test.

Mrs. Murdoch had written a novel; we discussed her book. She was wonderful.

Murdoch was being a nice, regular man who just happened to be a billionaire and a press lord. We talked children. We talked about his mom and her garden-all warm and family. We talked about decorators to do their house; they were moving to California, and I thought, Well, I’ll help. By the end of that meeting I was afraid we were going to have to spend every Sunday night with the Murdochs. Later, after the show started, his mother, Dame something or other, visited from Australia, and they brought her to meet me. Mrs. Murdoch told her, “Joan’s my very good friend”-so when I never heard from her again, I first thought maybe she didn’t have my right phone number.

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Shortly thereafter, we all attended Swifty Lazar’s traditional “A” list party following the Academy Awards ceremony-and pretended we did not know each other. At a table across from us, seated with Johnny Carson and Freddie De Cordova, were Barry Diller and Rupert Murdoch, smiling and laughing and palsy-walsy. Hours earlier they had been telling us, “Carson’s old, he’s tired, he can be taken, he’s a has-been, it’s over for him”-and there they were, kissing up to him. That’s Hollywood.

I wanted to tell Johnny what was afoot. Despite everything that had gone on, I wanted to believe that he of all people, so totally at the pinnacle, would understand. I told myself that if I went to him, maybe that old spark that was there in New York would rekindle. I thought maybe he would be the same man who had done the pilot of That Show and let Melissa hold his finger. I wanted him to say, “I don’t blame you, kiddo. I’ll be on your first show.”

But my advisers said I would be an absolute moron to act as though the Carson people were civilized and generous. The moment I told Johnny we were talking with Fox, I would be out of the studio in twenty minutes. I was there at The Tonight Show when David Brenner told them, “I’m going to have a show in the fall.” Produced by Motown, it was to be mainly music and musical personalities, with comedy mixed in. It was not direct competition to Carson, but David was instantly persona non grata at NBC. When I wanted him on during my weeks, the network said absolutely no, and Johnny did not have him back as a guest until long after his show failed. Even then he had to come on bowing and scraping and saying, “Boy, Johnny, there’s no one like you. “

So calling Johnny meant leaving the show immediately in March, and the angry, defiant side of me was saying that by this time I owed Johnny nothing, that I had a right to make the necessary business decisions. The Fox deal was not certain until the contract was signed, and my career has been ninety-nine disappointments and then one thing happens. Moreover, with the Fox deal I knew I would not be back on TV for five months, and my career re-

quired exposure on Carson for as long as possible. This was just a fact of life.

On April 4, 1986, Peter Dekom sent Barry Diller a letter of understanding that stated the negotiated terms that ultimately became our Fox contract. It gave us everything we wanted.

In the letter Diller agreed, “The show will be produced with production quality and staffing equal or better than that of The Tonight Show. ” We had approval rights of staffing, format, guests, and the producer. In matters of taste, Saturday Night Live would be the standard. The paycheck was $5 million a year for three years. That was a total of $7 million after taxes.

I’m told Johnny makes $8 million-plus a year. But much more important, he owns his own show. Even the Letterman show is owned by the Carson company.

Carson gets half the profits. While Letterman is rich, he’s rich because he’s careful. He will always be an employee.

Nonetheless, this incredible amount of money would finally put my fears and frights to rest. That’s what Murdoch had said, that’s what Diller said-and Edgar-and our accountant, Michael Karlin. A girl who had lived with nothing but money problems from the time her eyes were open-had lived in a low-grade panic of scraping and getting by and then insecurity-was being told she didn’t have to worry about money anymore.

There was no downside. With my own show, I had made the final step in my career. I would be getting the fun and respect Johnny had at NBC. I could devote eighteen hours a day to the show because Melissa was now at college at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Edgar was slated to be the executive producer, and I believed that would save my marriage, would pull Edgar out of his unpredictable anger, level out his highs and lows, renew his mental acuity. Already he was beginning to be the old Edgar, happy to get up in the morning, happy to go to work, happy to go to all the meetings I thought were boring then. The possibility that the show would not work never crossed my mind.

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In the second week of April Billy Sammeth received a call from Joe Bures, the vice president of program acquisitions at NBC and the first executive to voice any interest in extending my contract for another year. He was referred to Peter Dekom. By then it was too late.

Our first business meeting with Fox, the first shared decision with Barry Diller, took place in late April, when we met to discuss the press announcement of The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers. In retrospect, I see that all the psychological dynamics that would destroy the show surfaced that afternoon in a sunny conference room in the Twentieth CenturyFox tower in Beverly Hills.

Barry and the Fox press agent planned to announce The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers at a press conference of selected reporters, including me along with other new developments, like new stations, new plans. We knew they had a front-page news story that would take TV America by surprise, and they should launch the show with a gigantic press conference.

Looking back, this was the first signal that Barry Diller was inexperienced in the daily, dirty machinery of stationlevel television. His colossal success must have made him confident of his judgment about starting a show from scratch-the details of staff and the content of the show. But as we discovered, he did not know what the affiliates wanted, was unrealistic about ratings, had no feel for the late-night audience, and little understanding of the necessary staff.

His experience was movies. As a young man hooked by show business, he bypassed college to work in the mail room of the William Morris Agency. At age twentyfive he was a lesser executive at ABC, where he revolutionized programming by inventing the made-for-TV Movie of the Week. The man who hired him at the network, Leonard Goldberg, has described Barry seated at his small desk across from such studio heads as Lew Wasserman, Charles Bluhdorn, and Joe Levine, who fought with this boy while they ate egg-salad sandwiches and their limousines waited

downstairs. Goldberg said, “Here was this rough, tough kid who wasn’t afraid of them and had class and style.”

At age thirty-one-in 1973-Diller was hired by Charles Bluhdorn to be head of Paramount Pictures. With Michael Eisner, now the CEO of Disney, Barry chose movies that brought in nearly $3 billion. After Bluhdorn died in 1984, Diller left Paramount to work with Marvin Davis, running Twentieth CenturyFox, which was in terrible shape. After Diller brought it back into the black, Davis sold a controlling interest to Rupert Murdoch.

When I became directly involved with Barry, people told me he was the smartest man they had ever met-a terrific manager, decisive-but inscrutable, a man both social and antisocial. At the dinner to introduce my show, he made one tour around the room and then left. When he traveled on commercial airliners, he sometimes bought the seat next to him to keep it vacant.

I heard he was a man who reduced issues to black or white, unconfused by gray-and once he had made a decision, nothing would turn him around. I rarely heard “God bless Barry.” I heard about terrorized underlings and survivors who got promoted. I heard he was feared as a killer who finished people off when he sensed weakness or mediocrity, a man of shadows, filled with secrets.

I suspect most people who get to the top are ice-cold when it comes to business, and take all challenges personally. To rise to the top, you have to step on people, destroy or be destroyed. There’s room for just Barry Diller and nobody else.

At the announcement meeting I left the talking to my publicist, Richard Grant, and Edgar. I didn’t even. want to be there, but they said they needed me for reinforcement. I was the gun, a role I hated.

Richard Grant made our case very strongly, but Barry was not interested.

Then Edgar joined in, explaining that I was a major star moving from a major network show. Being humble was nuts.

Edgar was treating Barry as an equal, challenging him. And nobody talks back and forth with Barry, except maybe Rupert Murdoch. Suddenly Diller lost his cool. “Shut

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up,” he snapped at Edgar. Though Barry immediately apologized, he had done the unforgivable.

It was awful. Winning Barry Diller’s respect was Edgar’s fantasy. To Edgar, Barry represented the Hollywood establishment that had denied us our breaks. Also, the show was Edgar’s ticket to being important to himself. So when Barry turned on him, particularly in front of me, the hurt and humiliation must have been unbearable. From that moment forward Edgar’s attitude was, “I’ll show you. “

That “Shut up” was a flash of Diller’s contempt for Edgar from the very beginning. If Edgar had been my manager, he would have had a status. But to Barry, he was merely a star’s husband, superfluous, an unnecessary evil.

Barry considered him another Gary Morton, Lucille Ball’s husband, a Catskill-mountain comic made head of comedy development at Twentieth CenturyFox in order to get and keep Lucille. Gary was laughed at, ridiculed behind his back, never taken seriously. Maybe Gary Morton was smart about comedy, but nobody will ever know.

I believe Sandy Gallin encouraged Barry’s scorn. Sandy felt Edgar was responsible for my leaving him as my manager. Edgar had been very upset when Sandy had tried to launch his own television career by hosting a star variety show called Live & in Person. “Why do we have to pay Sandy fifteen percent when he’s never there?” Edgar kept asking. The last straw came when Edgar phoned him backstage somewhere and was told, “Mr. Gallin is unavailable. He is doing camera rehearsal.”

We fired him and hired Billy Sammeth. Billy was our road manager and was employed by Sandy’s firm. Katz, Gallin sued us for $90 million for breach of contract-but finally settled for a token amount. When Barry became involved with us, I am sure that Sandy did not say, “Oh, boy, you’re going to love working with Edgar. He’s smart as hell and really mellow.”

So at the start Barry and Edgar disliked each other. Whatever one did was annoying to the other. Issues that might have been resolved amicably were escalated to the moon. After that first argument Edgar set out to prove,

mano a mano, that he was just as tough and smart as Barry Diller. Diller simply overlooked him, froze him out. In the few meetings he allowed after that day, Barry talked only to me.

I think Barry and Edgar were destined to collide, partly because their natures were so alike. I think both were unhappy men, insecure at center but very intelligent, and fighters who used fear to keep their antagonists off-balance. Both had to be right, both had to be important, had to win-and everybody should know they had won. Both were control and detail freaks.

When events were out of their control, both of these perfectionists were deeply disturbed.

At that meeting my husband lost whatever clout he might have had. When I heard Diller tell Edgar to “shut up,” I stiffened-along with the whole room-and thought, Uhoh, wait a second. I realized we were not all on the same side. We were adversaries. We were going to do the press conference his way-so the fact that I, the gun, was sitting there was not enough. We were never going to have an equal voice. Well, if I was going to be the gun … I said, “Obviously then, my presence will not be needed.”

This initiated a pattern. In addition to the terms of the contract, the threat “She won’t show up” became one of Edgar’s weapons-the same ploy he used against Irving at the Downstairs at the Upstairs. Edgar was fighting for our side, but creating confrontations that I had to follow through on.

As graciously as he could manage, Barry gave in. After we left, we were told, he rolled his eyes at his lieutenants and said, “Okay, go ahead and make it a zoo, make it a circus. “

But I was stupid. Our position was right, but you do not fire the gun on the first day. You save it until the very end, when you are desperate.

Everything seemed so important at that moment, but it wasn’t. No single thing like a press conference makes or breaks a business relationship. So what if our show had been part of a list? We still would have made all the pa-

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pers. Another pattern was begun: victories not worth the trade-off of anger.

The threat to stay away is only effective once, because you can surprise the producers only once. After that, they begin asking themselves how much they need you, and begin preparing in some way, including getting rid of you. After the first surprise, threatening becomes a grandstand play, crying wolf, and one day they will call you on it, which later happened to us.

The next decision was how to break the news to Johnny Carson. I was forbidden by Fox to tell anybody until the day of the press announcement, which was scheduled for 11:00 A.m. Tuesday morning, May 6. The secrecy was so great, when the contracts were written, the only four copies were locked up in Barry Diller’s safe. Even the flowers he sent me had an unsigned card.